The Telomere Effect: A Revolutionary Approach to Living Younger, Healthier, Longer
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The New York Times bestselling book coauthored by the N...)
The New York Times bestselling book coauthored by the Nobel Prize winner who discovered telomerase and telomeres' role in the aging process and the health psychologist who has done original research into how specific lifestyle and psychological habits can protect telomeres, slowing disease and improving life.
Have you wondered why some sixty-year-olds look and feel like forty-year-olds and why some forty-year-olds look and feel like sixty-year-olds? While many factors contribute to aging and illness, Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn discovered a biological indicator called telomerase, the enzyme that replenishes telomeres, which protect our genetic heritage. Dr. Blackburn and Dr. Elissa Epel's research shows that the length and health of one's telomeres are a biological underpinning of the long-hypothesized mind-body connection. They and other scientists have found that changes we can make to our daily habits can protect our telomeres and increase our health spans (the number of years we remain healthy, active, and disease-free).
THE TELOMERE EFFECT reveals how Blackburn and Epel's findings, together with research from colleagues around the world, cumulatively show that sleep quality, exercise, aspects of diet, and even certain chemicals profoundly affect our telomeres, and that chronic stress, negative thoughts, strained relationships, and even the wrong neighborhoods can eat away at them.
Drawing from this scientific body of knowledge, they share lists of foods and suggest amounts and types of exercise that are healthy for our telomeres, mind tricks you can use to protect yourself from stress, and information about how to protect your children against developing shorter telomeres, from pregnancy through adolescence. And they describe how we can improve our health spans at the community level, with neighborhoods characterized by trust, green spaces, and safe streets.
THE TELOMERE EFFECT will make you reassess how you live your life on a day-to-day basis. It is the first book to explain how we age at a cellular level and how we can make simple changes to keep our chromosomes and cells healthy, allowing us to stay disease-free longer and live more vital and meaningful lives.
(An up-to-date survey of the current exciting state of tel...)
An up-to-date survey of the current exciting state of telomere biology. Telomeres--specialized structures found at the ends of chromosomes--are essential for maintaining the integrity of chromosomes and their faithful duplication during cell division. Chapters in this volume cover telomere structure and function in a range of organisms, focusing on how they are maintained, their roles in cell division and gene expression, and how deficiencies in these structures contribute to cancers and other diseases and even aging.
Elizabeth Helen Blackburn is an American molecular biologist. She is credited with the discovery of telomerase, an enzyme critical to the reproductive process of gene cells.
Background
Elizabeth Helen Blackburn was born on November 26, 1948 in Hobart, Tasmania. She was the second of the seven children born to the couple. Both her parents were employed as physicians
When she was barely four years old, the family shifted to Launceston.
Education
She attended the Broadland House Church of England Girls’ Grammar School.
When she was sixteen, her family relocated to Melbourne where she enrolled at the University High School. It was during her time at the university high school that her interest in science was fuelled.
Matriculating with high marks, she enrolled at the University of Melbourne from where she earned a Bachelor degree in Science in 1970 and Master degree in Science in 1972.
Later moving over to England, she gained admission at the Darwin College at the University of Cambridge. In 1975, she gained her PhD degree.
Upon completing her doctoral studies, for two years, from 1975 to 1977 she d5d her postdoctoral work in molecular and cellular biology at the Yale University. It was during these years that she along with Joseph Gall undertook research of the single-celled organism, Tetrahymena and subsequently found out the presence of Telomeres.
Career
In 1978, she joined the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley in the Department of Microbiology. Therein, she continued with her research on telomeres.
While at the University of California, she through her research came to know about the existence of a unique enzyme that controlled the duplication of telomere, continuously rebuilding the ends of chromosomes to protect them in the cells of young organisms, and allowing them to decay in older ones. However, the theory could not be proved and thus was rebuffed by scientists.
Meanwhile, Carol Greider, a science enthusiast, had completed her graduation with a major in biology. It was during an interview with Blackburn that she became interested in telomeres so much so that she decided to conduct her graduate research on telomeres, in Blackburn’s laboratory.
Together the two worked on finding out more about telomere’s regulating enzyme. They tried one method after the other, trying to observe the proteins found in telomeres, with an aim to discover if any of those performed the enzymatic activity that they were keen on discovering.
After failed attempts and unsuccessful trysts, they de-routed from their method and tried using oligonucleotides of DNA produced in a chemical synthesizer, rather than bacteria. To their surprise, the endless wait seemed to have paid off as an unfamiliar protein was finally detected in telomere. What’s more, it performed an enzymatic action as assumed and predicted.
Extremely excited and thrilled by the discovery, they continued experimenting just to be certain that there was no alternative explanation for the activity than what they had assumed. Finally, the duo deduced that the enzyme, which they named ‘telomerase’, was regulating the growth of telomere.
Telomerase was responsible for adding layers of repetitive DNA to the end of the chromosome when the cell was young, and then turning off, leaving the telomere to wear away and the cell to die.
Their research and discovery created a sensation in the scientific community which sensed that the discovery in the course of time may lead to new treatments for degenerative diseases, as well as cancer.
In 1990, she took up a position at the UC San Francisco (UCSF) where he worked in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology. She chaired the Department from 1993 to 1999.
In 2002, she was appointed to serve on the National Bioethics Advisory Commission which she eventually did for two years until her termination in 2004. Her stay wasn’t a pleasant one as it was fuelled by contention between President and her. While she supported the human embryonic cell research, the Bush administration was against it.
Currently, she serves as the faculty member serving in both the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, and the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at UCSF. She is also a Non-Resident Fellow of the Salk Institute. Furthermore, she is the president-elect of the American Association for Cancer Research. She serves on the Science Advisory Board of the Genetics Policy Institute.
Her current research involves studying the effect of stress on telomeres and telomerase. According to the studies, psychological stress may accelerate the ageing at cellular level. Furthermore, it was found that in women subjected to intimate partner violence, the length of telomere was shortened, causing overall poor health and greater morbidity.
(An up-to-date survey of the current exciting state of tel...)
Views
Quotations:
"Biology sometimes reveals its fundamental principles through what may seem at first to be arcane and bizarre. "
"Challenges in medicine are moving from 'Treat the symptoms after the house is on fire' to 'Can we preserve the house intact?'"
"I chose biochemistry as my major and graduated after 4 years with an Honours degree in Biochemistry. During that time, I had come to love biochemistry research, although I was just getting my feet wet in laboratory research. "
"I chose biochemistry as my major and graduated after 4 years with an Honours degree in Biochemistry. During that time, I had come to love biochemistry research, although I was just getting my feet wet in laboratory research. "
Membership
Blackburn was appointed a member of the President's Council on Bioethics in 2002.
Connections
She married John W. Sedat, and the couple has a son named Benjamin. She currently lives in San Francisco.